23 juin 2024 | International,
Army to buy more than 1,000 Switchblade drones through Replicator
The Army’s vice chief of staff, revealed the quantity for the first time during a June 21 House Appropriations defense subcommittee hearing.
13 février 2019 | International, Autre défense
DARPA: Architecting a New Breed of High Performance Computing for Virtual Training Environments
The testing, evaluation and training of future military systems will increasingly take place in virtual environments due to rising costs and system complexity as well as the limited availability of military ranges. Virtual simulators are already used to augment real-world training for modern fighter aircraft pilots, and they hold significant promise for addressing the rigorous demands of testing and training AI-enabled technologies. Current simulated environments, however, rely on conventional computing that is incapable of generating the computational throughput and speed to accurately replicate real-world interactions, model the scale of physical test ranges or meet the technical requirements of more complex systems.
“Virtual environments could significantly aid the military by creating the ability to test and train advanced radio frequency (RF) technologies 24/7/365 with high-fidelity models of complex sensor systems, like radar and communications,” said Paul Tilghman, program manager in DARPA's Microsystems Technology Office (MTO). “However, existing computing technologies are unable to accurately model the scale, waveform interactions or bandwidth demands required to replicate real-world RF environments.”
To address current computing limitations impeding the development of virtual test environments, DARPA created the Digital RF Battlespace Emulator (DBRE) program. DRBE seeks to create a new breed of High Performance Computing (HPC) – dubbed “Real Time HPC” or RT-HPC – that will effectively balance computational throughput with extreme low latency capable of generating the high-fidelity emulation of RF environments. DRBE will demonstrate the use of RT-HPC by creating the world's first largescale virtual RF test range. The range will aim to deliver the scale, fidelity and complexity needed to match how complex sensor systems are employed today, providing a valuable development and testing environment for the Department of Defense (DoD).
“While DRBE's primary research goal is to develop real time HPC that can be used to replicate the interactions of numerous RF systems in a closed environment, this is not the only application for this new class of computing. RT-HPC could have implications for a number of military and commercial capabilities beyond virtual environments – from time-sensitive, big-data exploitation to scientific research and discovery,” said Tilghman.
To support the creation of RT-HPC and the DRBE RF test range, the program will focus on two primary research areas. One area will explore designing and developing novel computing architectures and domain-specific hardware accelerators that can meet the real-time computational requirements of RT-HPC. Existing HPCs rely on general-purpose computing devices, which either prioritize high computational throughput while sacrificing latency (i.e., Graphics Processing Units (GPUs)), or have very low latency with correspondingly low computational throughput (i.e., Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs)). DRBE seeks to overcome the limitations of both by creating a new breed of HPC hardware that combines the GPU's and FPGA's best traits.
The second research area will focus on the development of tools, specifications and interfaces, and other system requirements to support the integration of the RT-HPC system and the creation of the virtual RF test range. These components will help design and control the various test scenarios that could be run within the range, enable the DRBE's RT-HPC to interface with external systems for testing, facilitate the resource allocation needed to support multiple experiments, and beyond.
DRBE is part of the second phase of DARPA's Electronics Resurgence Initiative (ERI) – a five-year, upwards of $1.5 billion investment in the future of domestic, U.S. government and defense electronics systems. As a part of ERI Phase II, DARPA is creating new connections between ERI programs and demonstrating the resulting technologies in defense applications. DRBE is helping to fulfill this mission by bringing the benefits of domain specific processing architectures to defense systems.
DARPA will hold a Proposers Day on February 13, 2019 from 9:00am to 5:00pm (EST) at 4075 Wilson Boulevard, Suite 300 Arlington, Virginia 22203, to provide more information about DRBE and answer questions from potential proposers. For details on the event, including registration requirements, please visit: http://www.cvent.com/events/darpa-mto-drbe-proposers-day/event-summary-69f231cef8814aa799cd60588b5dc9cf.aspx
A forthcoming Broad Agency Announcement will fully describe the program structure and objectives.
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11 août 2020 | International, Aérospatial, Naval, Terrestre, C4ISR, Sécurité
India to ban imports of 101 defence products
by Jon Grevatt India, one of the world's biggest defence importers, has announced a ban on procuring more than 100 military products from foreign suppliers. The new policy – announced on 9 August – is line with a government campaign to achieve self-reliance and is intended to “apprise India's defence industry about anticipated requirements ... so that they are better prepared to realise the goal of indigenisation”, the Ministry of Defence (MoD) said. The new ‘import embargo list' features 101 defence products, with emphasis mainly on land and sea-based equipment including artillery, armoured vehicles, destroyers, submarines, and a range of related components. However, although the list includes some air platforms – such as light combat aircraft and light combat helicopters – that are currently being produced by Indian defence firm Hindustan Aeronautics Limited, it also features some advanced technologies – including electronic warfare systems and air-to-air missiles – that would be integrated on to these platforms. The MoD said the banned list will be “progressively implemented” over the next few years. Accordingly, the list names items that will be barred for import from December 2020 (69 products), December 2021 (11 products), and December 2022 (21 products). The MoD added that the embargo list would be expanded progressively. “This is a big step towards self-reliance in defence,” said the MoD. “It offers a great opportunity to the Indian defence industry to rise to the occasion to manufacture the items ... by using their own design and development capabilities or adopting technologies designed and developed by [state-owned] Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO).” https://www.janes.com/defence-news/news-detail/india-to-ban-imports-of-101-defence-products
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26 avril 2019 | International, Aérospatial
Government watchdog finds more problems with F-35’s spare parts pipeline
By: Valerie Insinna WASHINGTON — Only about half of the F-35s worldwide were ready to flyduring an eight-month period in 2018, with the wait for spare parts keeping jets on the ground nearly 30 percent of the time, according to a new report by the Government Accountability Office. Over the past several years, the Defense Department has sought to improve mission capable rates by making improvements to the way it and F-35 contractor Lockheed Martin order, stockpile and repair spare parts. However, GAO's findings imply that the situation may have gotten worse. The GAO's report, released April 25, investigated how spare parts shortages impacted F-35 availability and mission capable rates in 2018, with most data gathered between a May and November sustainment contract period. “In 2017, we reported that DOD was experiencing sustainment challenges that were reducing warfighter readiness, including delays of 6 years in standing up repair capabilities for F-35 parts at its depots and significant spare parts shortages that were preventing the F-35 fleet from flying about 20 percent of the time,” GAO said in the report. “According to prime contractor data, from May through November 2018, F-35 aircraft across the fleet were unable to fly 29.7 percent of the time due to spare parts shortages,” it said. “Specifically, the F-35 supply chain does not have enough spare parts available to keep aircraft flying enough of the time necessary to meet warfighter requirements.” That lack of improvement may make it more difficult for the U.S. Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps to hit an 80 percent mission capable rate by the end of fiscal year 2019, as mandated by then-Defense Secretary Jim Mattis last fall. The military services stopped providing mission capable rates for aircraft last year, citing operational sensitivities. However, the data put forth by the GAO indicates that progress stagnated in the lead up to Mattis' order. From May to November 2018, mission capable rates — which measure how many planes possessed by a squadron can perform at least one of its missions — hovered around 50 percent for all versions of the F-35. But when GAO assessed how many planes were fully mission capable — meaning that they were ready to fulfill all of their mission sets — all variants were far from meeting the 60 percent target. Only 2 percent of F-35C carrier takeoff and landing versions hit the fully mission capable mark, with the F-35Bs slightly better at 16 percent and the F-35A at 34 percent. The GAO is skeptical that the services will be able to hit the 80 percent mission capable rate goal this year, and it is even more critical of the Defense Department's plans to fund spares in future years. The department intends to buy “only enough parts to enable about 80 percent of its aircraft to be mission-capable based on the availability of parts.” However, that planning construct will likely only yield a 70 percent mission capable rate at best, the GAO said, because it only accounts for the aircraft on the flight line and not jets that are in the depot for longer term maintenance. No silver bullet for parts shortage issues Like all complicated problems, there is no single solution for the F-35 spare parts shortage, which is driven by a number of factors. GAO indicated that the Defense Department still has “a limited capacity” to repair broken parts, creating a backlog of 4,300 parts still needing to be addressed. Between September and November, it took more than six months to fix parts that should have been repaired in a window of two to three months. The F-35's much-maligned Autonomic Logistics Information System (ALIS) was designed to be able to track parts and automate the process of generating and expediting work orders, however, GAO notes that the system still requires manual workarounds from users in order to accomplish tasks. Supply and maintenance personnel cited challenges such as “missing or corrupted electronic spare parts data,” limited automation and problems caused by ALIS's subsystems not communicating with each other properly, it said. As the F-35 is still a relatively new platform, it has taken time for the program to assess which parts have been failing more often than previously estimated — but that is an area where the Defense Department is making progress, the GAO stated. “DOD has identified specific parts shortages that are causing the greatest aircraft capability degradation, and it is developing short-term and long-term mitigation strategies to increase the quantity and reliability of these parts,” the report said. One such component is a coating used on the F-35's canopy to help it maintain its stealth characteristics, which has been found to peel off at an unexpected rate, creating a heightened demand for canopies. “To address these challenges, the program is looking for additional manufacturing sources for the canopy and is considering design changes,” the GAO stated. But — somewhat paradoxically — the F-35 has been flying for a long enough time that there is significant parts differences between the first jets that rolled off the production line to the most recently manufactured planes. The GAO found “at least 39 different part combinations across the fleet” on top of variations in software. “According to the program office, DOD spent more than $15 billion to purchase F-35 aircraft from the earliest lots of production, specifically lots 2 through 5 ... but it faces challenges in providing enough spare parts for these aircraft,” the report stated. One problem — the cannibalization of F-35 aircraft for parts — is partially user-inflicted. “From May through November 2018, F-35 squadrons cannibalized (that is, took) parts from other aircraft at rates that were more than six times greater than the services' objective,” the GAO stated. “These high rates of cannibalization mask even greater parts shortages, because personnel at F-35 squadrons are pulling parts off of other aircraft that are already unable to fly instead of waiting for new parts to be delivered through the supply chain.” During an interview this February, Lt. Col. Toby Walker, deputy commander of the 33rd Maintenance Group, told Defense News that F-35 maintainers at Eglin Air Force Base, Fla., had stopped pulling parts off a cannibalized F-35 and had seen some improvements to mission capable rates as a result. “We're not continually moving parts from one aircraft to another. We're relying on the program to provide our parts,” he said. “It was a very strategic plan to do that to increase aircraft availability by not sitting an aircraft down.” In a statement, Lockheed Martin said that it had taken key steps to improve parts availability, such as transitioning some suppliers to performance based logistics contracts that incentivize companies to meet certain targets, as well as “master repair agreements” that will allow other suppliers to make longer term investments in their production capability. “These actions are beginning to deliver results and we're forecasting additional improvement. Newer production aircraft are averaging greater than 60 percent mission capable rates, with some operational squadrons consistently at 70 percent,” the company said. “From a cost perspective, Lockheed Martin has reduced its portion of cost per aircraft per year by 15 percent since 2015. Our goal is to further reduce costs to $25,000 cost per flight hour by 2025, which is comparable to legacy aircraft while providing a generational leap in capability.” https://www.defensenews.com/air/2019/04/25/government-watchdog-finds-more-problems-with-f-35s-spare-parts-pipeline